The only thing I really understood from the death of Jesus is that his death ended the need for us to apologize to Jehovah by killing animals. In other words, a death makes Jehovah happy. The death of Jesus made Jehovah happy enough to say "Okay, no need to kill anymore animals. You killed my kid. Killing him is like killing zillions of animals. His death gave me a boner, thank you."
The Ransom for Nitwits
by Farkel 35 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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dgp
Marked because this is funny and interesting.
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ziddina
Marked because I'm a "NitWit" and I need to have this explained to me...
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moshe
Now the Jews, who have studied the Torah for thousands of years, always come to the same conclusion that there is no such thing as original sin, which would put Jesus out of business, but what do the Jews know anyway about their book?
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just n from bethel
BTTT (my way of saying thanks for Farkel's awesomeness)
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startingover
Never ever made sense to me either. Thanks for the post Farkel
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PublishingCult
bookmarked.
I would venture to say, Farkel, that nobody on this board has debated your logic because it's pretty closed to debate.
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ProdigalSon
Helena Blavatsky's logic is second only to Farkel!
http://www.blavatsky.net/magazine/theosophy/ww/additional/christianity/God-TheUnknowable.html
The clergy say: no matter how enormous our crimes against the laws of God and of man, we have but to believe in the self-sacrifice of Jesus for the salvation of mankind, and His blood will wash out every stain. God's mercy is boundless and unfathomable. It is impossible to conceive of a human sin so damnable that the price paid in advance for the redemption of the sinner would not wipe it out if a thousandfold worse. And, furthermore, it is never too late to repent. Though the offender wait until the last minute of the last hour of the last day of his mortal life, before his blanched lips utter the confession of faith, he may go to Paradise; the dying thief did it, and so may all others as vile. These are the assumptions of the Church.
But if we step outside the little circle of creed and consider the universe as a whole balanced by the exquisite adjustment of parts, how all sound logic, how the faintest glimmering sense of Justice revolts against this Vicarious Atonement! If the criminal sinned only against himself, and wronged no one but himself; if by sincere repentance he could cause the obliteration of past events, not only from the memory of man, but also from that imperishable record, which no deity -- not even the Supremest of the Supreme -- can cause to disappear, then this dogma might not be incomprehensible. But to maintain that one may wrong his fellow-man, kill, disturb the equilibrium of society, and the natural order of things, and then -- through cowardice, hope, or compulsion, matters not -- be forgiven by believing that the spilling of one blood washes out the other blood spilt -- this is preposterous! Can the results of a crime be obliterated even though the crime itself should be pardoned? The effects of a cause are never limited to the boundaries of the cause, nor can the results of crime be confined to the offender and his victim. Every good as well as evil action has its effects, as palpably as the stone flung into a calm water. The simile is trite, but it is the best ever conceived, so let us use it. The eddying circles are greater and swifter, as the disturbing object is greater or smaller, but the smallest pebble, nay, the tiniest speck, makes its ripples. And this disturbance is not alone visible and on the surface. Below, unseen, in every direction -- outward and downward -- drop pushes drop until the sides and bottom are touched by the force. More, the air above the water is agitated, and this disturbance passes, as the physicists tell us, from stratum to stratum out into space forever and ever; an impulse has been given to matter, and that is never lost, can never be recalled! ...
So with crime, and so with its opposite. The action may be instantaneous, the effects are eternal. When, after the stone is once flung into the pond, we can recall it to the hand, roll back the ripples, obliterate the force expended, restore the etheric waves to their previous state of non-being, and wipe out every trace of the act of throwing the missile, so that Time's record shall not show that it ever happened, then, then we may patiently hear Christians argue for the efficacy of this Atonement.
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tec
I would venture to say, Farkel, that nobody on this board has debated your logic because it's pretty closed to debate.
LOL, it isn't the debate or the info... I don't really want to take Farkel on ;)
Plus, I don't believe any of the things above, so I don't really know what I would be debating.
Due to Adamic sin, humans were captive to satan, satan had acquired "ownership" over them, and God "had" to somehow, buy them back from Satan! It's pretty hard to imagine the Creator of the Universe and everything in it, getting over His head in debt to one of his own kids, but that's what they believed. God, being that He is, well "God", would look pretty bad if his credit rating ever dropped below 850, so he must have felt obligated to pay that debt and clear things up. So, in effect, God made a deal with the Devil, his kid. He made this deal with the Devil by buying his human kids back from Satan by killing his firstborn kid, Jesus. But God was clever. He "tricked" Satan with a "bait and switch" tactic by resurrecting Jesus! When Satan complained that he got screwed on the deal, God said, "I said I would kill Jesus, but I never promised not to resurrect him almost immediately after. Now give me back my human kids." God can be such a prankster.
First, are people captive to sin or to Satan? My belief is that they are captive to sin, if they allow sin to rule them. I don't think the whole ransom was due to a deal with the devil though either. Though Satan might say that a man can't be loyal to God or put God first even to the point of his own death, and Christ proved that wrong. I don't think that's the whole point. An aspect, yes. But the worst Satan can do is tempt people and try to manipulate people (with some advantages on his side without anyone to shield us, sure). We're the ones who decide what we do though.
This doctrine is what was actually taught for about the first 1,000 years of the Christian era.
I'm not sure how anyone knows what doctrine was taught for the first couple hundred years - there seem to be a variation in opinion on that one. Not until it was all uniform and full of doctrines at least, and that didn't happen until later.
I do agree completely that the JW idea of the ransom is ridiculous and well, pretty pointless.
As for the modern view (I don't know what many people teach so I'm just going to write what I believe), the flesh is sinful. It has sin in it. It dies. But we - who we are on the inside - don't have to die or be destroyed. Christ covers over our sins, by doing what we so often fail to do. He did remain loyal, even to death. He did ask forgiveness for those who were wronging him, instead of asking that they be killed in vengeance or even justice. He did what we should do - show mercy, faithfulness, love - and in so doing, made amends for us and our failings, because of sin (that entered the world through Adam). Like taking someone's debt onto oneself.
So we can have life - true life, spiritual life - through Him. The same life that Adam had before he lost it, and before he was cast out of the garden of Eden - a spiritual place/realm.
Tammy
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NomadSoul
Awesome post Farkel.